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Minn. judge rules against Wal-Mart on work breaks

(AP) - A judge has ruled against Wal-Mart in a
class-action lawsuit, saying the discount retailer violated state
labor laws 2 million times by cutting worker break time and
"willfully" allowing employees to work off the clock.

Dakota County Judge Robert King Jr. on Monday ordered Wal-Mart
to pay $6.5 million in compensatory damages, but Wal-Mart could end
up paying more than $2 billion after a jury in October considers
civil penalties and punitive damages.

"We believe that this award not only helps the individual
clients, but it also sends a message to Wal-Mart that it has to pay
for its mistakes," said Justin Perl, an attorney representing the
former Wal-Mart employees named as plaintiffs in the lawsuit.

Wal-Mart spokeswoman Daphne Moore said Tuesday that the
Bentonville, Ark.-based company disagrees with portions of the
judge's decision and is considering an appeal.

"Our policy is to pay every associate for every hour worked and
to make rest or meal breaks available to every employee," Moore
said, adding that many Wal-Mart employees who testified during the
trial said they were getting breaks and being paid properly.

"That said, we're always going to take seriously any sort of
allegations of our policy not being followed," she said.

Shares in Wal-Mart rose 48 cents to $56.68 in afternoon trading.

The class-action part of the lawsuit represented 56,000 Wal-Mart
and Sam's Club employees in Minnesota and covered a period from
September 1998 through January 2004.

The ruling, which was given to the parties Monday evening, comes
after judgments against Wal-Mart in Pennsylvania and California
found similar violations.

In Pennsylvania, workers won a $78.5
million judgment in 2006 for working off the clock and through rest
breaks. A $172 million verdict against Wal-Mart in 2005 found the
company illegally denied lunch breaks in California. Wal-Mart is
appealing those rulings.

Wal-Mart has also settled a Colorado suit over unpaid wages for
$50 million.

Perl said the former employees involved in the Minnesota case
were able to show that Wal-Mart violated their rights.

"It's been a long and tough road for them," Perl said of his
clients. "These are individuals working hard to make a living at
roughly less than $10 an hour, and many of them testified and many
records established that they were missing breaks, missing meals
and working off the clock."

Moore pointed out that the 3½-month trial also revealed that
some Wal-Mart employees had missed breaks or meals voluntarily.
"We don't believe the employer is at fault when that's the case,"
she said.

But the judge ruled otherwise, finding that Wal-Mart violated
its contract nearly 70,000 times by failing to pay employees for
off-the-clock work.

The judge said Wal-Mart should have known the
employees were working off the clock while at computer-based
training terminals and "willfully allowed" it to continue. The
company also failed to provide employees with rest breaks more than
1.5 million times and shortened employees' breaks more than 44,000
times, according to the order.

Wal-Mart was also found in violation of statutes relating to
making and keeping employee time records and failing to let
employees have any time for a meal break. While the plaintiffs
won't receive compensatory damages for those violations, Wal-Mart
is subject to a $1,000 civil penalty for each incident.